Surfing the net

The PC

The PC is configured for DHCP. This means it will request an IP address and other network information at startup from any available DHCP service. The PC is physically attached to the local LAN by plugging into the switch. After the PC receives an IP address, subnet mask and a gateway from the DHCP service it then establishes a network connection.

When the PC user runs a browser, a connection is made to the remote server identified by the URL. This connection uses the TCP/IP protocol and the request is sent to port 80 (HTTP) on the web server. Apache handles all requests on this port and will serve up the requested web pages. The pages are sent from the web server back to the PC for rendering by the browser.